HYDERABAD: This is one venture where no Telugu film has ever gone before - the hallowed world of Oscars.

This isn't a full-fledged Telugu film and more of an English one, but with distinct Telugu flavour and ambience laced in it with Telugu cinema's biggest commercial filmmaker Kovelamudi Raghavendra Rao helming the venture. `Morning Raga', nominated for the Oscars in the best foreign film category is among 56 films from all over the globe vying for that big black statuette, including the Amol Palekar directed Hindi film, `Paheli'.

The film stars Rao's son, Prakash along with Shabana Azmi and Perizaad Zorabian with the Bangalore-based playwright Mahesh Dattani writing and wielding the megaphone.

Set in idyllic coastal Andhra countryside and capturing the essence of Carnatic music, the film showcases the quintessential Telugu culture, its distinct character and earthy ambience. The film is also about the meeting of two worlds — the young and the old, Western and Carnatic music, rural and urban and the modern and the traditional.

`Totally unexpected'

"This was totally unexpected. We thought the film would bag a national award, but going all the way to the Oscars and vying with the cream of global films is something wonderful," an ecstatic K. Raghavendra Rao affirmed. It isn't a first for a Telugu's venture alone, no Indian English film has been nominated to the Oscars earlier. Prakash is a trained actor from the famous Lee Strasberg's Acting School, New York. An engineering graduate, he was introduced in mainstream Telugu cinema with `Neetho', which bombed. `Morning Raga' was his second film. "My debut film was very mainstream. I couldn't fit in at all. But, this is something close to my sensibilities," said Prakash on the eve of the film's release. The film also has another Telugu connection. Its music score was by noted Telugu music director Mani Sarma along with Amit Heri, who leads a jazz band in Bangalore.

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